If you can dispense with the baggage that now comes with a Mel Gibson film, the rewards of Apocalypto are great-Gibson has, simply stated, crafted one of the best films of 2006, and one of the most entertaining action films in decades.
The setting is pre-colonial Mexico, and the main players Mayan tribesman that share the land with monkeys, snakes and panthers. Taken from his family by a band of mercenaries, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) and many of his tribe's men are taken to the great Maya City, where they are to be used in ritual sacrifice. Able to escape, Jaguar Paw spends the remaining half of the narrative desperately escaping attempts to recapture and kill him.
Gibson and co-writer Farhad Safinia have taken the time to ground their story in Mayan myth and history, and their attention to authenticity lends the film the feeling that what is on screen is merely a small part of a larger world. It's a remarkable achievement for a film so heavily reliant on the traditional chase narrative. And chase is an accurate description of film's driving plot-Gibson keeps the pace high and the violence gory and ever-present and never lets the film get boring.
Youngblood invests Jaguar Paw with an immediacy that makes connecting with his situation-despite the film's use of original Mayan spoken language-a non-issue. By the end of Apocalypto, the film has become not merely the story of Jaguar Paw and his family nor a harbinger of the looming threat of European imperialists, but instead has grown greater, encompassing societies all throughout history, from the Mayans to today. Let's all thank our lucky Sun Gods that despite his extracurriculars, Gibson hasn't lost his ability to craft gold on the screen.
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